


Us, you mean?

by etal



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 06:01:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13698306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etal/pseuds/etal
Summary: Futurefic. Timothée is patient, Armie is confused.





	Us, you mean?

Twelve years after he watched Timothée make the most jumbled and breathless acceptance speech in Oscar history, Armie is at yet another Awards after-party. He’d had a nomination for Best Supporting, but he hadn’t won and nobody had expected him to. That’s OK. It’s enough that he still gets to come and kick around the edges of these things. It’s exhausting to be right in the middle of it all and he hasn’t got the energy to waste these days.

He feels the drag of approaching middle-age more often now, a heaviness in his body which does nothing to still his habitual restlessness but which he’s aware of in the mornings, especially on hungover days, threatening thickness and slowness and a generalised dulling. When he’s feeling gloomy, he looks in the mirror and sees how all the things that made him employable, even when he wasn’t getting jobs, in his 20s and 30s, are beginning to fade and thin. 

He finds a place at the quiet end of the room by the bar. It’s a good place to watch and wait and get himself together for the moment when Timothée will arrive.

Armie hasn’t seen him in person for at least a year and that isn’t even the longest he’s gone without some opportunity to meet. There was one time when it looked like they might be cast in the same film: Sofia Coppola had him read for a part as a sad dad with closeted passions and mentioned in the meeting that there was a part that Tim would be perfect for. He smiled his ‘stay away’ smile and waited. She’d studied him, her clever eyes watching him closely and said, “but maybe not. We’d all be seeing Elio and Oliver up there again.” And anyone else with any say seemed to think the same thing. They weren’t cast together again. The _Call Me_ sequel didn’t happen. Everyone had too many commitments and impossible diaries, but they could have worked it out. It was more a feeling that they were all reluctant to go back and poke what had been perfected. And then Luca got obsessed with dance after _Suspiria_ , and drew a definitive line and said he wasn't going to do it and that was the end of it: no Luca meant no project.

And there it should have ended. For a few years things had kept moving so fast, great roles, good times, home and work all harmonious and clear. Then… a slackening. Elizabeth and he separated, perfectly amicably, and everyone stayed good friends, the kids accepting of the new reality. In the midst of all that, there were still roles worth getting lost in, a few genuine highlights as well as a certain amount of his pre-Luca bad luck and questionable choices. Enough, anyway, to distract him from the weird accretion of pain as every year took him further away from his time with Timothée. On the last night in Crema there had been a faltering conversation, a half-made invitation from the boy and Armie had wanted to take the offered hand and follow him out of the party, into the night. But he hadn’t wanted to be that guy, the one who takes advantage of his younger colleague or who makes the fatal mistake of getting too far into his part that he can’t get back. So he hadn’t said ‘yes’ and Timothée hadn’t said ‘but’ and after that had just looked at him every now and then with a kind of amused watchfulness.

Only it was like Timothée had taken a small sharp blade and cut a tiny wound into the palm of his hand that never quite healed; or like there was an olive stone in his shoe, a painful rub with a stinging edge, which wouldn’t let him walk straight and he couldn’t shake it out and stride onwards. He could not let go and the further he ploughed on, the more aware he was of the rope around his middle, holding him in place and keeping him walking in circles, like a tethered mule. 

It’s ridiculous. It wasn’t even _real_ , _nothing_ had happened between them, between Armie and Timmy, it was all Elio and Oliver. Only somehow it was always still going with those two, the not-real ones, and he couldn’t escape their orbit. 

Looking back, nothing since then had been as good. Not just jobs – _life_ wasn’t as good. That summer totally fucked him for real life. He’d heard his own fool’s voice droning on in countless interviews at the time and since, saying things, admitting to feelings, as if he was confessing, offering up genuine revelations. He’d been able to turn the most intimate moments of the time in Crema into platitudes, something you say for the publicists or the earnest festival audiences: it was beautiful, it was special, it was unique. Problem is, down the line, it turns out it really _was_ all those things and it was over and it was never coming back. Love and life had come to him, really come, with open arms, and then gone, leaving him behind on the dusty railway platform. See you round. Hope you enjoyed. _Au revoir_ , except no _revoir_.

He didn’t watch their film for years. He didn’t want to fuel his periodic descents into a kind of delirium of longing, for youth, for that summer, for Timothée. It was insane and pointless, he was cruel to himself – he was tormented, like to the point of _writhing_ with regret and mortification that he had failed to understand the whole message of the story he was fucking _acting out_. He should have reached, grabbed, taken hold of…, he should have tangled his fingers into Timothée’s crown of curls and wrapped his palm around his slender neck and shown him everything he was feeling. He should have kissed him, he should have kissed and kissed him and it wasn’t enough that they had actually done that because he _hadn’t_ done it. Oliver – that dick – had done it. Fucking _peaches_.

And when he’s done torturing himself with all of _those_ thoughts, of Timothée in his lap, his own big cock buried inside that beautiful, supple body, or on his knees before the boy, holding him up while he sucks him down, with no faking this time, no crew, no careful avoidance of contractually-protected body parts and both of them getting to have all of each other, he gluts on public Timothée, tracking his presence across premieres, parties and soulful interviews in a variety of languages he still can’t read in. Their meetings in person have been few, and brief. After he’d moved out of the family home, Timothée had come to see him and they’d had a drink or seven. Armie had talked and talked – about himself, about his lack of direction - and Timothée had listened, with his patient smile and gentle eyes. And when Armie had finished whingeing and self-immolating, he had nodded and said, “OK, well, you let me know if you want to meet again.” 

They did, every now and then, but Armie would find himself crowding the conversation with _stuff_ : the restaurant they were in, the script he couldn’t decide on, smoking, not smoking, smoking again. He would let the conversation stay at the level of gossip and safe reminiscence and watch for that look of measured heat to settle on Timmy’s face. And when he saw it, he would find a way to cut out and leave.

There he was now, across the room, Armie fills in how a magazine report would describe him “in lively conversation” with his co-stars of the movie that was robbed of Best Film tonight. They shine with youth and success and Armie feels a hundred years old.

Timmy’s sweet gangliness and occasional explosions of uncoordinated energy have settled into a more consistent fluidity. He’s broader across the shoulders, slender as ever, but not so breakable as he once was. He’s still quick to smile and generous with his laughter at other people’s jokes. He’s looking around every now and then but he hasn’t seen Armie yet and it’s only after Armie finishes his drink and calls for another, letting his gaze focus back on its object, that Timothée looks up and straight at him. 

Armie can’t for the life of him summon the conventional greeting he should give at this moment. He should wave, big and goofy, “Hey Timmy!”; he should barrel over there, insist on a bear hug, lift Timmy onto his toes, shake hands with the friends, congratulate them on the amazing movie, diss the winners. But he just can’t be fucked to do anything but let his face tell his truth. He just looks, drinking him up, trying to conjure that latent heat from Timothée right away because he cannot wait any longer. Timothée is watching him and they’ve passed the moment now where this can be normal. It’s as much a confession as he can manage. 

And, God bless him, Timmy moves. Slips away from his group, eyes fixed on Armie and makes his way through the crowd to him, managing to evade the stalling hands and eager faces which want to delay him and keep him for themselves. When he reaches Armie he stands for a moment, hands in his pocket, something amused in his face. He leans to Armie’s ear and says, low, “What? Are you ready now?” 

Armie can’t think what he means.

“Are you ready to come with me, now?”

There’s only one possible answer, at last. “Yes.”

“C’mon then.”

Timothée tucks his hand around Armie’s elbow and steers him through the crowd, out by a back door away from the watching phones, a few words into his own cell summoning a car. He's all mature direction, at ease in this world and entirely in charge of himself. 

They’re quiet in the car and they don’t touch until they’re safely behind the door of Timothée’s hotel room. Timothée starts it. He holds out his hand and Armie grazes his fingertips, then curls their palms together. Timothée steps closer, tips his face up so their lips touch, a suggestion of a kiss, but even so Armie can’t quite believe that this bridge between then and now has somehow stayed traversable.

“You really want me?”

“Always.”

“Since then, I mean since Crema? Or…”

“I’ve been waiting.”

“All this time?” Armie’s voice is hoarse.

“All this time.” Timothée switches into French. “ _Idiot_.”

“But why didn’t you say?”

The eyeroll is pure Elio-brattishness. “You were right not to come when I asked then. You were married.”

“I haven’t been for…”

“Yeah but then …. you were lost. I don’t know, you were right there in front of me but I couldn’t find you. I had to wait.”

Armie pulls him in, lets his lips slip as he’s dreamt of doing so many times, from the silk of Timothée’s hair to the heat behind his ear.

He can’t help himself. He has to say it.

“Call me by…”

“Don’t do that shit,” Timothée says impatiently, breaking away. “Don’t you get it? I’m done with acting this. I was done with acting it years ago. I don’t want some imagined fucking long-lost yearning affair bullshit. I want this _now_ ,” he grasps Armie’s face roughly between his hands, pressing insistent kisses, “and this” shaking his shoulders, then slides to his knees, face in Armie’s crotch and says “and this and this”, he’s kissing at Armie through his pants, stroking his cheeks against Armie’s thighs.

Armie’s unbalanced back a few steps and sways down to the bed. Timothée looks up at him, mouth set, unafraid, then determinedly sets to work on taking off Armie’s pants. He pauses, carefully sets his hands on Armie’s knees. He waits while Armie’s cock hardens, then, in one of his swift, graceful movements, so well-remembered, he bends his head so that his lips touch just the tip; his tongue slips down in one delicate lick, one side then the other, maddening and perfect and Armie fists the sheet so as not to grab and push. 

Later, when Armie’s recovered and stretched Timothée out across the bed, he touches his lips to his slim ankles, his calves, put his cheeks against his thighs and his stomach, turns him and licks his way up and down his spine and takes everything he’s allowed, which is everything. And when he’s finally spread him and fitted them together so sweet and right, he’s glad to find that he isn’t unmanned; he doesn’t cry or beg or even thank Timmy too much, he just uses the liturgy of steady deep thrusts and careful hands wrapped round his hips and stroking along his cock to say how much he loves him.

“What took you so long?” Timothée asks afterwards, and doesn’t explain any further.

Amie picks up Timothée’s hand and kisses along his slim fingers, holds the tip of his thumb between his teeth for a second while he thinks.

“I had to get old.”

“You’re not old.”

“OK. I had to get old _er_. So I could understand that you don't have to be young. Papa Perlman was talking out of his ass. You’re not done by 30. As long as there's a scrap of yourself left.”

“Armie?” Timothée sighs and squeezes the last inch closed between them. “I’m glad I’m still small in your arms.”

Armie tips his head back, helpless, thinks: small in my arms, dear in my eyes, the beginning and the end of me.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been admiring the way T/A fics on AO3 have given us really thoughtful versions of Elizabeth. I didn't have the space or capability to do anything as fair and decent here and I'm sorry for dismissing the kids in half a sentence. Obvs wish them only good things and happiness in the real world.


End file.
